The Land of Hand

This page is the archive of our Trip to China before we received Joshua.
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Monday July 23, 2007 – 9:20 am – The end of a long journey and the beginning of another!

In less than 1 hour we will be in a van on our way to meet Joshua for the first time.  We are feeling the prayers of all of you and we so appreciate all the messages of encouagement and love that you have posted in the Guestbook section of the site.  It is so wonderful to hear from home!!  Words cannot express how much your support has meant to us through this long journey and we look forward to having you as a continued support group as we begin the journey of parenthood.  We will post pictures and hopefully a short video of our first meeting with our son in the next few hours. 

Love to you all!!

Julie

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Sunday, July 22, 2007 – The Nanjing City wall and the Nanjing Museum

We visited the Nanjing City Wall which was constructed over a thousand years ago and although not much is left some has been preserved and we hiked to the top and got a splendid view overlooking the city.  We also visited the Nanjing Museum and saw many incredible artifacts.

Last night Julie and I went for a walk around the streets of the hotel and then today our guide walked with us and we have decided we won’t do that again.  Both times were a very unpleasant experience.  Hundreds of eyes staring at you and people passing you and then turning around and following you.  An older man walked past us at one point and then turned and started to grab Julie’s arm and our pace didn’t allow him to do it, but still it was not something she or I want to experience again.

Nanjing is very different than Guangzhou.  The people here are much more traditional Chinese.  The hotel staff are nice but much fewer people speak english so it makes it that much harder to communicate.

We did some shopping with our guide at what she called a "supermarket" but it was close to a Super Target or Super Walmart.  We wanted to get another suitcase to carry back the suveniers with and a stroller for Joshua.  I tried to locate a cheap portable DVD player so that we could watch DVD’s on the plane, but this store had a limited variety and were too expensive.  Our guide will take us to another place later in the week and hopefully we will find one there.

Tomorrow morning (Monday for us at 10:30 am and Sunday evening in Atlanta at 10:30pm) we will have Joshua in our arms!  Our guide has told us that she will pick us up at 10:00 from our hotel and we will go to the place where we will meet him.  He is being brought from Suzhou which is about 2.5 hours away.  We may not sleep much tonight from the excitement!  We are so close now.  Our guide has a son that is 4 years old and we asked her if she would maybe like to bring him one day so that we can go to the park and they can play together and she said that she would like that.  She is very happy that Joshua will have us as his parents.  She would like one day to move to the US herself because she loves the Americans she has met over the years she has been a guide.

Once we are settled in the room tomorrow evening(Monday morning Atlanta time) I will post the pictures and video from our first meeting of Joshua.  Please pray today that God will help him to deal with the trauma he will experience leaving his foster family and being given to people he knows little about.  Pray that we will have supernatural understanding about what is happening to him and that he will be open to his new parents. 

See you tomorrow,
Jason

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Saturday, July 21, 2007 – We have landed in Nanjing!

Our flight was only 1 hour 45 minutes and was very smooth.  We sat at the very front of the plane and watched as person after person looked at us like they had never seen an American before.  Eventhough we don’t speak the language we knew that the stares and occassional snickering spoke volumes about the wonder of seeing us immersed in the Chinese culture.

The guide that picked us up was wonderful and the driver got us to the hotel safely.  That is one thing I haven’t spoken of much but the driving here is absolutely mad.  I thought that Atlanta drivers were crazy.  Imagine your daily commute in Atlanta, Chicago or New York and throw in hundreds of people crossing the road on foot and hundreds of bicycle and scooter riders weaving in and out of the cars and you are getting close to what it is like in China.  The lines on the road mean nothing.  We have witnessed 6 lanes merge into 2 and don’t know exactly how we lived through it but by the grace of God we did.  The video below is from Youtube, but it shows to a slight degree what I am referring to.  In this video each road is 4 lanes feeding into the intersection, but the ones I have been on were 2 lane and no sidewalks.

The hotel we are in is the Mandarin Garden Hotel (www.mandaringardenhotel.com) and there is a Burger King actually located in the hotel!  I had the best Whopper I think I have ever had today.  There is also McDonalds, KFC and Pizza Hut and I can see all of them from the front entrance of the hotel.  Our room has a seating area, a King bed which is more comfortable than at the White Swan and even came with a rubber ducky in the tub!  Yes, it made Julie cry..   They obviously know why we are here and have put us in an environment to lessen the stress on us and him.  God is so good!  We are blessed to be here and our guide said to us on the way to the hotel from the airport that she liked us and thought we were nice people and that Joshua is a lucky boy to have us as parents.  We told her that it is our blessing to be able to have him as a son.  I don’t know if I will post again tonight, but I just wanted to let everyone know we are safely in Nanjing.

 

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Friday, July 20, 2007

We first went to the oldest Buddhist Temple in Guangzhou which dates back to 1,400 years ago.  Next we went to a museum that was atop the actual burial site that memorializes the occupant.  This person and his concubines were in separate rooms and all of the artifacts discovered with them were on display.  This burial site was very old and it was interesting to see bronze pots made a thousand years before and all of the intricate carvings and artwork on them.

Today I had the best Pizza Hut pizza I have had in years!  I don’t think it had anything to do with the actual pizza but more to do with the fact that nothing here has tasted like home until today.  Even places that other adoptive families have said tasted like Western style food that was not what my taste buds thought.  Although the Pizza Hut menu was weird we enjoyed having something familiar that actually came as advertised.  Nothing you order is actually what you get at all the places we have eaten in.  I ordered a pepperoni pizza in an "Italian" restaurant in the hotel and it came with black olives and tomatoes.  Julie ordered a "cheese" pizza and it had what looked like sausage.  That is just a sample of the oddness of trying to order food and keep away from anything washed in water or any local fruit and vegetables.  Everyone that has been here has told us to avoid most foods because they will make you sick.  Needless to say, I cannot wait to be home and have a cup of Campbells soup and a grilled cheese.  Ahh, the finer things of life!

Tomorrow morning we depart Guangzhou for Nanjing which is only about 1.5 hours flight north.  I will post more tomorrow afternoon after we get settled at the Mandarin Garden hotel. 

Just 2 more days until we get Joshua!  It is really hard to believe that we are almost there!

-Jason

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Thursday, July 19, 2007

Today was a combination of shopping and visiting a park in downtown Guangzhou.  Our guide for the next few days until we fly to Nanjing is Sharon and today we told her that we wanted to go to a place we had heard others speak of called the Friendship Store.  We first went to a park in downtown Guangzhou to kill some time since the store didn’t open for an hour.  The park was beautiful and really large.  I think we went up a couple of hundred steps as we walked through the park.  The humidity due to the water features was intense and in the first 30 minutes we were soaked with sweat. Sharon said that the reason the place was crawling with people was because it was good for your health to be out in the humidity doing some exercise. 

The place was mostly occupied with older adults and Sharon told us that this was mostly because they were all retired.  In China if you are 50 you will most likely retire because there are lots of younger people who need your job and the company wants younger people so they insist on your retirement.  These people were exercising using a feathered device that works like the "hackysak" did in the US.  We saw many groups of men and women kicking this device from person to person with great skill and dexterity.  I was impressed!  I could not do it anywhere close to the precision these 60 and 70 year old people were.

The Friendship Store is a place that many adoptive families had described as, "a great place to find some good bargains on clothes and gifts".  I about dropped my jaw when we got out of the car in front of this 7 story store that was like what I would expect on Rodeo Dr. in Hollywood.  This place looked like Sax 5th Avenue inside and everything was pretty expensive.  I did find some much needed sunglasses though for a150 Yuan which would be around $20 dollars.  It was the best bargain in the place!

We ventured out last night trying to find the McDonald’s that was supposedly, "Just outside the Hotel" but after walking for almost an hour we could not find it.  Sharon drove us past it today and we were close, but the map that the hotel gave us did not properly reflect the street it was on.  We are finding that what we consider precision is not what the people here consider it.

We have one more day in Guangzhou and will then depart for Nanjing early Saturday morning (Friday evening for you).  We are still not sleeping well due to several reasons including the hard bed and the excitement that we are just a few days away from getting Joshua!  Thanks for your continued prayers and for your posts in the guestbook!  We are really enjoying reading your comments and I am glad that you are enjoying the videos and pictures.  I will continue to post more.  The video for today is from the park in downtown Guangzhou.  It shows the dexterity of the people as they kick the feathered device with their feet.  Also on the video is a group of people Ballroom dancing to Elvis Pressley’s "Are you lonesome tonight?".  For a people that never show public affection this was a pleasant surprise.  Julie asked if I wanted to do some waltzing with her and my response was, "It is so hot and I am so soaked that I may spontaneously combust if you touch me!".  It was really hot!

Till tomorow,

Jason and Julie

 

 

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Today we spent about 4 hours doing some sight-seeing with JoJo around Guangzhou.  It was Orlando Disney Magic Kindgom asphalt in August hot!  The van we rode in had air-conditioning and that was truly a blessing.  We visited the Shen family temple which is sort of a museum of ancient furniture and arts/crafts of the territory as well as a memorial to the Chen dynasty that was once in power in China.

We also visitied Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s Memorial Hall which is a memorial to a man that started an opposing faction to communism.  Although his faction was an enemy to communism and favored a more democratic government He was a well-liked and respected man and so there is a memorial to him.  Apparently, Taiwan is where the remnant of this political group fled after the civil war between them and the Communists.

JoJo took us also to a place called the Jade Store.  This was a hukster’s paradise.  We must have smelled like fresh meat because they were on us so quickly that it felt like the air in the room was sucked out as they rushed to be the first to teach us about the qualities of Jade.  We learned that the Chinese believe that Jade has physical and spiritual benefits.  They were also very insistent that adopted children needed to have a jade pendent to signify their heritage so after looking around for a while we settled in on a Jade dragon pendant that was only barely affordable.  Everything was in the thousands in Yuan so you have to divde by 7.5 to determine an approximate value in US dollars.  The real find was a gentleman who has been recognized as a Master in writing Chinese caligraphy both quickly and with both hands/feet and mouth. For a modest price we were able to get him to make a piece that will hang in our home that reads, "Hand Family, Faith, Hope, Love".  The video of him creating it is below.  We had authentic chinese black tea while we waited for it to dry and truly enjoyed being immersed in the culture of a people that go back thousands of years!

I have placed the pictures for the day below and some videos as well for you to see.  We are tired because of all of the walking in what the Weather channel describes as 90 degrees but feels like 104 degrees.  I will also link a video or two on the traffic here.  There are no perceptible rules for driving.  If you want to stop in the middle of the road and let out or pick up a passenger, go ahead.  It is a bit scary, but interesting.  I will post more later if I can.

-Jason

Photos from the day:

Video of some of the artwork done by locals to Guangzhou:

 

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Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Well, we have arrived in Guangzhou!  After the 5.5 hours to L.A., the 6 hour layover and the 14.5 hour flight to Guangzhou we are tired…  Julie slept 6 hours or so on the Guangzhou flight and I slept about 4 so we plan on sleeping some today.  By my watch it is 7:35pm Atlanta time, but it is 7:35 AM Tuesday morning in Guangzhou.  Talk about weird…

The flight to Guangzhou was amazing.  The service was tremendous and although it was very long and boring the thought of flying for almost 15 hours at 600 MPH at an altitude of 40,000 feet was pretty thrilling.

One really cool thing was getting a chance to spend the entire layover in Los Angeles with the Ferrill family who are also adopting through our agency Lifeline.  We had dinner together and just enjoyed their company.  They are adopting a boy and a girl and that will make them the Brady bunch with the 2 girls and 2 boys they already have!

We were met by JoJo at the airport and her driver took us straight to the White Swan Hotel and I snapped lots of pictures on the way.

I will post more later this afternoon (middle of the night in the US).  Thanks for your continued prayers.  We are feeling them. 

Here are more pictures from our flight(s) and Guangzhou: